Is there ever a way to gauge at my reality accurately? How can I think about my life and the world it inhabits in in an accurate way? Shit, are we going back to epistemology? How do I know what I know?
On a sunny day or a rainy night, the thought steps closer and breathes down my neck, behind my shoulder. I think back to conflicts, losses, regrets. It is a dirty business.
I can walk away from a situation unscathed and I will still find a way to fling myself back, in the hopes of getting a scrape that would bleed a little just so I can say: here is the proof. Here is something I can work with. But with nothing, I can make it whatever I want it to be. It could have been blindingly good intentions, it could have been an act of revenge. I run back and forth between the two, and the person in my mind morphs more and more into someone -- something -- no longer recognizable.

I step back.